Fedora Developers Discussing Possibility Of Dropping Legacy BIOS Support

[Giovanni Fabbro]

I don't think I like this new person. :P

You did say you don't like source-based distros....

[Giovanni Fabbro]

Define your words please.

Do you have in mind some Pentium MMX system on socket 5? Because I've got a dual core AMD Phenom system with an Asus board that has BIOS, and its lightning fast in general use on fedora 32.

Some people would say AM3 qualifies as "legacy", but if that is true then "painfully slow" is a gross misstatement for a legacy system. These are fast computers.

There's something wrong with this picture if you have a Phenom with a mobo that doesn't have UEFI support.

[Tomin]

There's something wrong with this picture if you have a Phenom with a mobo that doesn't have UEFI support.

What? It was pretty common back then to have BIOS. I have a Phenom II system with BIOS still running.

[Giovanni Fabbro]

I boot UEFI exclusively and at least Xubuntu has no problem switching between the CSM and pure UEFI when the bios is reset.
I also tend to enable secure boot. Luckily Xubunutu handled that quite well too.

In general we need to start dropping legacy subsystems to improve. I hate Apple but admire their ability to just drop legacy cruft at the drop of a hat. I think a balance between Apples reckless abandonment of working standards and Microsoft refusal to abandon long superceded standards is needed for Linux and the general Processor ecosystem to make forward progress.

It's not an Xubuntu-specific thing to have Secure Boot support - Canonical digitally signs their shim bootloader on official releases (and remixes), as does Fedora. I may not understand all the stuff about bootloader code-signing but I read it as OEM PC manufacturers include Microsoft's Windows Certificate Authority as a trust chain, and in order for the Linux bootloaders to be compatible with it, they're cross-signed against Microsoft's CA/PK. You can load your own certificates into a UEFI, assuming that the version/implementation is new enough and/or includes the features for user-loaded certs via some kind of PK/KEK menu, but OS developers can't guarantee that the user's system has such a feature so they just sign it with Microsoft's certs instead. Secure Boot isn't perfect, in that if you need user-installable or closed-source drivers for Linux, it breaks Secure Boot for Linux, but it does help with validating the integrity of the boot process from POST to kernel. EDK II is a development kit for it, but OEM's will often use a closed-source variant or entirely proprietary implementation. TianoCore is the open-source UEFI implementation built from EDK II. It's what "Mr. Chromebox" uses to make ChromeOS UEFI firmware replacements so you can boot Linux or Windows on a Chromebook/box, which in that case is built as a payload for Coreboot hardware init.

[Giovanni Fabbro]

Linux community as a whole discussing the possibility of dropping distribution dictators like Red Hat (CentOS, Fedora).

(hey, I can create chaos just as well....)

Red Hat contributes the most to the Linux community of any single group of people.

[Giovanni Fabbro]

I do not own an ASRock board right now but compared to ASUS the UEFI implentation of Sandy/Ivy Bridge was certainly better. Also I don't know of any Kanotix user which had so bad experience with this brand. In my experience the brand for a desktop board does not really matter. You can expect that many lowcost boards just follow the chip vendors examples and do not use extra durable parts - which might be better for OC. But even then, usually motherboards don't die so fast, and even if it really happend then it would be much more likely that the root cause was a bad (cheap) PSU.

More often than not it's solder joints and faulty VRM's on the board. But yeah, power fluctuations can cause issues. Using a shitty power bar without surge suppression is just asking for trouble. I'd rather protect my system with an extra $15 for a power bar with lifetime warranty and equipment insurance (APC) than pay $150 for a power supply where only a $50 one is necessary.

[Giovanni Fabbro]

What? It was pretty common back then to have BIOS. I have a Phenom II system with BIOS still running.

Oh wait. Original Phenom? Ya, that's pretty old. Phenom II Gigabyte boards had really shitty BIOS's too - no native UEFI booting, instead used some janky thing by Gigabyte to get 2TB drive support with only BIOS booting.

I might be thinking of FX processors. FX motherboards should all have been UEFI.

In any case, wasn't that back when they were only putting 1 integer unit per 2 float unit in "modules"? Like, they weren't really 2 proper "cores"? Didn't they count fp units with dedicated cache as a "core" but in actuality it was one "module" even though OS vendors counted a "core" as a whole CPU unit with an int+fp+cache as a core until Microsoft caved and redefined it?

[Slartifartblast]

Read your manual. This is common behavior in modern AMD mobos. If you populate the NVMe slots, some of the SATA connectors will not be available.

These six SATA3
connectors support SATA
data cables for internal
storage devices with up to
6.0 Gb/s data transfer rate.
* M2_2 and SATA3_5_6
share lanes. If either one
of them is in use, the other
one will be disabled.

Just read the manual for this board, thanks for the heads up.

https://download.asrock.com/Manual/B550M%20Pro4.pdf

[kevmif]

Way, way too soon. Been using a T410 for years and would rather not have to choose between switching hardware or switching distros. Also using an old Core 2 as a media PC. That one is getting pretty long in the tooth but still works.

If the hardware is still viable (excluding niche use cases), it should be supported. I feel it would be tough to make a decent case for supporting single core x86 systems from the 90's to early 00's but once you get in to the x86_64 / multi core space it becomes much easier to justify maintaining support.

Though at some point a line does need to be drawn based on the goals of the distro.

Do any of the major distros collect data on hardware usage? I seem to remember back in the old days you could send details of your hardware via the installer. Would be good for Fedora to introduce something like this (opt in of course) so they could get a baseline of what is still actively being used. Though I seem to recall last time they tried (to get a view of actual real world installs) a bunch of people were completely irrational about perceived privacy implications.

[r1348]

Keep in mind, it is a public mailing list and anyone can post ideas. This is a volunteer contributor posting his personal idea. If it is popular and people don't see a problem, it may get implemented. Quite frequently on changes like this, people point out issues and it gets shot down. I wouldn't freak out just because an idea gets posted in a list. If you have something useful to contribute, feel free to participate though

How dare you bring the voice of reason in the constant outrage fest of the Phoronix forums?